After acquittal in subway chokehold trial, Daniel Penny says he was ‘vulnerable’ in the encounter
NEW YORK– After his acquitted of murder, the military veteran who strangled an erratic, mentally ill man on the New York subway told an interviewer that he put himself in a “very vulnerable position” but felt compelled to take action.
“I will put up with a million court dates and people calling me names and people hating me just to keep one of those people from getting hurt or killed,” Daniel Penny told Fox News in a clip that aired Tuesday, a day after the ruling.
Meanwhile, dozens of New Yorkers protested the outcome of the trial, holding signs and chanting Jordan Neely’s name in a Manhattan square on Tuesday evening.
An anonymous Manhattan jury was cleared Cent of a charge of negligent homicide in the death of Neely30. The jury had deadlocked last week on a more serious charge of manslaughter, viz rejected.
Penny, who had served in the Marines for four years, put Neely in a chokehold for about six minutes after Neely had an outburst that scared passengers on a subway train on May 1, 2023. Penny is white. Neely was black.
According to passengers, Neely had not touched anyone, but had expressed a willingness to die, to go to jail — even to kill, some said. The former street artist was homeless, had schizophrenia, had synthetic marijuana in his system and had been convicted of assaulting people at subway stations.
In his first extended comments since the start of the trial, Penny told Jeanine Pirro that he is “not a confrontational person.” But he said he wouldn’t have been able to live with “the guilt I would have felt if someone got hurt, if he did what he threatened to do.”
He said he put himself in a “very vulnerable position” when he restrained Neely on the floor of the subway.
“If I just let him go, I’m on my back right now, he could just turn around and start doing what he said to me… kill, hurt,” Penny said in the clips, aired ahead of the planned release of the full interview Wednesday on the Fox Nation streaming service.
Penny, 26, also criticized officials involved in his prosecution as “self-serving,” suggesting they refused to scrutinize their own role in the circumstances leading to his meeting with Neely.
“This is their policy that clearly hasn’t worked,” Penny said. But, he added, “their ego is too big to just admit they are wrong.”
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat whose office brought the case, said after the verdict that prosecutors “followed the facts and the evidence from beginning to end.” His office had no further comment Tuesday.
During the trial period of one monthProsecutors say Penny went too far in his response to Neely, who was unarmed. The veteran’s lawyers argued that he risked his own safety to protect other passengers from a threatening man.
The case sparked a national debate and divided New Yorkers over issues of homelessness and public safety in a city where millions ride the subway every day.
Cent chose not to testify during the process, but the anonymous jury heard what he told police in the minutes and hours after his encounter with Neely. Penny described Neely as “a crackhead” who “acted like a lunatic” and said he put the man in a chokehold and “just kicked him out” to prevent him from hurting anyone.
“I’m not trying to kill the guy,” he told investigators in a recorded interview. “I’m just trying to de-escalate the situation.”
A city medical examiner certain that the choke killed Neely, but Penny’s defense disputed the finding.
Jurors also heard testimony from other passengers on the train seen videos that some recorded. The jury also heard from police, pathologists, a psychiatric expert, a Marine Corps instructor who taught Penny chokehold techniques and pennies relatives, friends and fellow Marines.